As this chamber has been discussing human rights and the Middle East, I’ve just learned — this is a dispatch coming out of Agence France Presse from Beirut — that five civilians were killed today in Syria. Four were killed in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, when their car was shelled. A fifth was killed when troops shelled the rebel-controlled town of Rastan.

And as we sit here, thousands of civilians in Homs remain trapped in shelling. Activist Khaled al-Tellawy reports that, “Many neighborhoods of Homs are still under siege, and it really hard for us to get food or medicines in. Field doctors are amputating the limbs of the injured, because they have no equipment to treat them with, and they can’t be smuggled out.” Continue reading ‘The U.N.’s Day of Hate’